Latest blogs for Specialisms

The government has announced an increase in the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) to £1 million in relation to qualifying expenditure incurred from 1 January 2019. Since 1 January 2016 the AIA limit has been £200,000.  It may be worth deferring planned significant capital expenditure as, I am sure you will agree, the additional £800,000 relief…

The Autumn Budget 2018 confirmed that many private sector contractors will no longer be responsible for deciding if they are caught by the IR35 rules. Engagers who are medium or large organisations will now decide the IR35 status of the PSCs they contract with. What will constitute a medium or large organisation? It is not…

The Charity Commission is worried about the number of charities not reporting serious incidents or taking a long time to do so. This has perhaps become a concern since the Commission raised a statutory inquiry into Oxfam in February, following allegations of misconduct by staff in Haiti. It is a Charity’s trustee’s responsibility to ensure…

Philip Hammond’s much predicted ‘End to Austerity’ Budget was a lot more positive than similar pronouncements of recent years. Although UK growth is still sluggish (predicted at 1.6% for 2018), higher than expected tax revenues have enabled the public purse strings to be loosened. Announcements that will be of interest to technology SME’s include: New…

No audit sets out to conclude with total confidence that a set of financial statements are 100% free from any misstatement. To do so would belie the technological reality and scale of modern business; auditors would likely become a permanent fixture at client premises to review every single business transaction and audit would become an…

Technological advances in the ways that data is captured, processed, stored and communicated continually change the ways in which we do business. In the context of auditing, data analytics concerns the process of extracting, transforming, validating and analysing large volumes of data to make judgements and form conclusions. The way we approach auditing must change…

In the run up to the Autumn Budget, where it is widely speculated the Government will clamp down on IR35 in the private sector, barely a week goes by without another IR35 case being in the news. Employment tribunal claims are increasingly being launched by those caught by the IR35 reforms of the public sector.…

Those companies that continually go through funding rounds, such as your typical techco start-up, should be aware that HMRC are introducing a new tax election wef 6-Apr-19: Proposed legislation contained within the Finance Bill 2018 This election will allow shareholders who hold at least 5% of the company on 6 April 2019, and who are…

In a recent HMRC test case (Ames v CRC), the Upper Tribunal considered whether it was necessary for EIS income tax relief to have been claimed when an EIS investment was made, for the transaction to then potentially qualify for exemption from capital gains tax when the investment was sold. For the case in question,…

Occupying a let property as the only or main residence at some point during the period of ownership will not only shelter the gain relating to the period for which the property was occupied as the main residence (and also that relating to the last 18 months of ownership), but will also entitle a claim…